[Illustration: "TAKE YOUR OLD BUTTER!" SHE STORMED AT THE ASTONISHED
MR. PEABODY.
"Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm." Page 63]
Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm
OR
The Mystery of a Nobody
BY
ALICE B. EMERSON
AUTHOR OF "BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON,"
"BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL,"
"THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES," ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Books for Girls
BY ALICE B. EMERSON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
BETTY GORDON SERIES
BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
RUTH FIELDING SERIES
RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WAITING FOR WORD 1
II UNCLE DICK'S PLAN 10
III DINING OUT 19
IV AT THE CROSSING 28
V MRS. PEABODY WRITES 37
VI THE POORHOUSE RAT 46
VII BRAMBLE FARM 55
VIII BETTY MAKES UP HER MIND 64
IX ONE ON BOB 72
X ROAD COURTESY 80
XI A KEEN DISAPPOINTMENT 89
XII BETTY DEFENDS HERSELF 96
XIII FOLLOWING THE PRESCRIPTION 105
XIV WINNING NEW FRIENDS 114
X NURSE AND PATIENT 123
XVI A MIDNIGHT CALL 132
XVII AN OMINOUS QUARREL 141
XVIII IN THE NAME OF DISCIPLINE 149
XIX THE ESCAPE 157
XX STORMBOUND ON THE WAY 165
XXI THE CHICKEN THIEVES 174
XXII SPREADING THE NET 181
XXIII IN AMIABLE CONFERENCE 188
XXIV A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 197
XXV THEIR MUTUAL SECRETS 204
BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
CHAPTER I
WAITING FOR WORD
"I DO wish you'd wear a sunbonnet, Betty," said Mrs. Arnold, glancing
up from her ironing board as Betty Gordon came into the kitchen.
"You're getting old enough now to think a little about your complexion."
Betty's brown eyes laughed over the rim of the glass of water she had
drawn at the sink.
"I can't stand a sunbonnet," she declared vehemently, returning the
glass to the nickel holder under the shelf. "I know just how a horse
feels with blinders on. You know you wouldn't like it, Mrs. Arnold,
if I pulled up half your onion sets in mistake for weeds because I
couldn't see what I was doing."
Mrs. Arnold shook her head over the white ruffle she was fluting with
nervous, skillful fingers.
"There's no call for you to go grubbing in that onion bed," she said.
"I'd like you to have nice hands and not be burnt black as an Indian
when your uncle comes. But then, nobody pays any attention to what I
say."
There was more truth in this statement than Mrs. Arnold herself
suspected. She was one of these patient, anxious women who
unconsciously nag every one about them and whose stream of complaint
never rises above a constant murmur. Her family were so used to Mrs.
Arnold's monotonous fault-finding that they rarely if ever knew what
she was complaining about. They did not mean to be disrespectful, but
they had fallen into the habit of not listening.
"Uncle Dick won't mind if I'm as black as an Indian," said Betty
confidently, spreading out her strong little brown right hand and
eyeing it critically. "With all the traveling he's done, I guess he's
seen people more tanned than I am. You're sure there wasn't a letter
this morning?"
"The young ones said there wasn't," returned Mrs. Arnold, changing her
cool iron for a hot one, and testing it by holding it close to her
flushed face. "But I don't know that Ted and George would know a letter
if they saw it, their heads are so full of fishing."
"I thought Uncle Dick would write again," observed Betty wistfully.
"But perhaps there wasn't time. He said he might come any day."
"I don't know what he'll say," worried Mrs. Arnold, her eyes surveying
the slender figure leaning against the sink. "Your not being in
mourning will certainly seem queer to him. I hope you'll tell him Sally
Pettit and I offered to make you black frocks."
Betty smiled, her peculiarly vivid, rich smile.
"Dear Mrs. Arnold!" she said, affection warm in her voice. "Of course
I'll tell him. He will understand, and not blame you. And now I'm going
to tackle those weeds."
The screen door banged behind her.
Betty Gordon was an orphan, her mother having died in March (it was now
June) and her father two years before. The twelve-year-old girl had to
her knowledge but one single living relative in the world, her father's
brother, Richard Gordon. Betty had never seen this uncle. For years he
had traveled about the country, wherever his work called him, sometimes
spending months in large cities, sometimes living for weeks in the
desert. Mr. Gordon was a promoter of various industrial enterprises and
was frequently sent for to investigate new mines, oil wells and other
large developments.
"I'd love to travel," thought Betty, pulling at an especially stubborn
weed. "I hope Uncle Dick will like me and take me with him wherever he
goes. Wouldn't it be just like a fairy story if he should come here
and scoop me out of Pineville and take me hundreds of miles away to
beautiful and exciting adventures!"
This enchanting prospect so thrilled the energetic young gardener
that she sat down comfortably in the middle of the row to dream a
little more. While her father lived, Betty's home had been in a small,
bustling city where she had gone to school in the winter. The family
had always gone to the seashore in the summer; but the only exciting
adventure she could recall had been a tedious attack of the measles
when she was six years old. Mrs. Gordon, upon her husband's sudden
death, had taken her little daughter and come back to Pineville, the
only home she had known as a lonely young orphan girl. She had many
kind friends in the sleepy country town, and when she died these same
friends had taken loving charge of Betty.
The girl's grief for the loss of her mother baffled the villagers who
would have known how to deal with sorrow that expressed itself in words
or flowed out in tears. Betty's long silences, her desire to be left
quite alone in her mother's room, above all her determination not to
wear mourning, puzzled them. That she had sustained a great shock no
one could doubt. White and miserable, she went about, the shadow of
her former gay-hearted self. For the first time in her life she was
experiencing a real bereavement.
When Betty's father had died, the girl's grieving was principally
for her mother's evident pain. She had always been her mother's
confidante and chum, and the bond between them, naturally close, had
been strengthened by Mr. Gordon's frequent absences on the road as a
salesman. It was Betty and her mother who locked up the house at night,
Betty and her mother who discussed household finances and planned to
surprise the husband and father. The daughter felt his death keenly,
but she could never miss his actual presence as she did that of the
mother from whom she had never been separated for one night from the
time she was born.
The neighbors took turns staying with the stricken girl in the little
brown house that had been home for the two weeks following Mrs.
Gordon's death. Then, as Betty seemed to be recovering her natural
poise, a discussion of her affairs was instigated. The house had been
a rented one and Betty owned practically nothing in the world except
the simple articles of furniture that had been her mother's household
effects. These Mrs. Arnold stored for her in a vacant loft over a
store, and Mrs. Arnold, her mother's closest friend, bore the lonely
child off to stay with them till Richard Gordon could be heard from and
some arrangement made for the future.
Communication with Mr. Gordon was necessarily slow, since he moved
about so frequently, but when the news of his sister-in-law's death
reached him, he wrote immediately to Betty, promising to come to
Pineville as soon as he could plan his business affairs to release him.
"Betty!" a shrill whisper, apparently in the lilac bushes down by the
fence, startled Betty from her day dreams.
"Betty!" came the whisper again.
"Is that you, Ted?" called Betty, standing up and looking expectantly
toward the bushes.
"Sh! don't let ma hear you." Ted Arnold parted the lilac bushes
sufficiently to show his round, perspiring face. "George and me's going
fishing, and we hid the can of worms under the wheelbarrow. Hand 'em to
us, will you, Betty? If ma sees us, she'll want something done."
"Did you go to the post-office this morning?" demanded Betty severely.
"Sure I did. There wasn't anything but a postal from pa," came the
answer from the bushes. "He's coming home next week, and then it'll be
nothing but work in the garden all day long. Hand us the can of worms,
like a good sport, won't you?"
"Where did you hide them?" asked Betty absently.
"Under the wheelbarrow, there at the end of the arbor," directed Ted.
"Thanks awfully, Betty."
"Where's George?" she asked. "Isn't there another mail at eleven, Ted?"
"Oh, Betty, how you do harp on one subject," complained Ted, poking
about in his can of worms with a stick, but keeping carefully out of
sight of the kitchen window and the maternal eye. "Hardly anything ever
comes in that eleven o'clock mail. Anyway, didn't mother say your uncle
would probably come without bothering to write again?"
"I suppose he will," sighed Betty. "Only it seems so long to wait.
Where did you say George was?"
Ted answered reluctantly.
"He's in swimming."
"Well I must say! You wait till your father comes home," said Betty
ominously.
The boys had been forbidden to go swimming in the treacherous creek
hole, and George was where he had no business to be.
"You needn't tell everything you know," muttered Ted uncomfortably,
picking up his treasured can and preparing to depart.
"Oh, I won't tell," promised Betty quickly.
She went back to her weeding, and Ted scuffled off to fish.
"Goodness!" Betty pushed the hair from her forehead with a grimy hand.
"I do believe this is the warmest day we've had! I'll be glad when I
get down to the other end where the arbor makes a little shade."
She had reached the end of the long row and had stood up to rest her
back when she saw some one leaning over the white picket fence.
"Probably wants a drink of water," thought Betty, crossing the strip of
garden and grass to ask him, after the friendly fashion of Pineville
folk. "I've never seen him before."
The stranger was leaning over the fence, staring abstractedly at a
border of sweet alyssum which straggled down one side of the sunken
brick walk. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his straw hat
pushed slightly back on his head revealed a keen, tanned face and
close-cropped iron gray hair. He did not look up as Betty drew near and
suddenly she felt shy.
"I--I beg your pardon," she faltered, "were you looking for any
particular house?"
The stranger lifted his hat, and a pair of sharp blue eyes smiled
pleasantly into Betty's brown ones.
"I was looking, not for a particular house, but for a particular
person," admitted the man, gazing at her intently. "I shouldn't wonder
if I had found her, too. Can you guess who I am?"
Betty's mind was so full of one subject that it would have been
strange indeed if she had failed to guess correctly.
"You're Uncle Dick!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck
and running the risk of spiking herself on the sharp pickets. "Oh, I
thought you'd never come!"
Uncle Dick, for it really was Mr. Gordon, hurdled the low fence lightly
and stood smiling down on his niece.
"I don't believe in wasting time writing letters," he declared
cheerfully, "especially as I seldom know my plans three days ahead.
You're the image of your father, child. I should have known you
anywhere."
Betty put her hands behind her, suddenly conscious that they could not
be very clean.
"I'm afraid I mussed your collar," she apologized contritely. "Mrs.
Arnold was hoping you'd write so she could have me all scrubbed up for
you;" and here Betty's dimple would flicker out.
Mr. Gordon put an arm about the little figure in the grass-stained
rose-colored smock.
"I'd rather find you a garden girl," he announced contentedly. "Isn't
there a place where you and I can have a little talk before we go in to
see Mrs. Arnold and make our explanations?"
Betty drew him toward the arbor. She knew they would be undisturbed
there.